Posts tagged with 'backports'

The first Beta of the upcoming PostgreSQL 9.2 was released yesterday (see announcement). Your humble maintainer has now created packages for you to test. Please give them a whirl, and report any problems/regressions that you may see to the PostgreSQL developers, so that we can have a rock solid 9.2 release.

Remember, with the postgresql-common infrastructure you can use pg_upgradecluster to create a 9.2 cluster from your existing 8.4/9.1 cluster and run them both in parallel without endangering your data.

For Debian the package is currently waiting in the NEW queue, I expect them to go into experimental in a day or two. For Ubuntu 12.04 LTS you can get packages from my usual PostgreSQL backports PPA. Note that you need at least postgresql-common version 0.130, which is available in Debian unstable and the PPA now.

I (or rather, the postgresql-common test suite) found one regression: Upgrades do not keep the current value of sequences, but reset them to their default value. I reported this upstream and will provide updated packages as soon as this is fixed.

PostgreSQL 9.1 has had its first release candidate out for some two weeks without major problem reports, so it’s time to promote this more heavily. If you use PostgreSQL, now is the time to try it out and report problems.

We always strive to minimize the number of major versions which we have to support. They not only mean more maintenance for developers, but also more upgrade cycles for the users.

9.0 has not been in any stable Debian or Ubuntu release, and 9.1 final will be released soon. So we recently updated the current Ubuntu development release for 11.10 (“oneiric”) to 9.1. In Debian, the migration from 8.4/9.0 to 9.1 is making good progress, and there is not much which is left until postgresql-9.0 can be removed.

Consequently, I also removed 9.0 from my PostgreSQL backports PPA, as there is nothing any more to backport it from. However, that mostly means that people will now set up installations with 9.1 instead of 9.0, and won’t magically make your already installed 9.0 packages go away. They will just be marked as obsolete in the postgresql-common debconf note.

If you want to build future 9.0 packages yourself, you can do this based on the current branch: bzr branch lp:~pitti/postgresql/debian-9.0, get a the new upstream tarball, name it accordingly, add a new changelog with a new upstream version number, and run bzr bd to build the package (you need to install the bzr-builddeb package for this).

Update 2011-09-09: As I got a ton of pleas to continue the 9.0 backports for a couple of months, and to keep it in Debian unstable for a while longer, I put them back now. I also updated the removal request in Debian to point out that I’m mainly interested in getting 9.0 out of testing. I don’t mind much maintaining it for a couple of more months in unstable. My dear, I had no idea that my backports PPA was that popular!

Hot off the press, I uploadedpostgresql-9.0 final into Debian unstable; they will not go into Debian Squeeze, because Squeeze is frozen and it will take a long time to port all the packaged server side extensions to 9.0.

We probably need to do a better job communicating that we do offer updated drivers in the distro. Things like the linux-backport packages in Lucid for various drivers, etc.

Perhaps the installer in the future can detect funky unknown hardware and pull in the right things automatically or something instead of me having to know that there are backported wireless drivers available or something.